Ancestry’s Irish unit fails to secure rights to millions of Scottish records

Genealogy service has millions of users around the world

Ancestry says it has more than 25 million people registered. Stock image. Photo: Getty

The popularity of tracing family trees prompted the Irish arm of Ancestry.com to embark on what has been effectively a failed effort to force the National Records of Scotland to let it reuse tens of millions of images and make them available to its fee-paying customers around the world.

The Irish unit, Ancestry Ireland, wanted access to records spanning the 12th to 16th centuries, including prison and census records, wills and valuation rolls.

Ancestry.com says it generates revenue of about $1bn (€850m) a year.

In 2024, the Irish unit generated revenue of $222m and a

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